Nomologically imperceptible substances

9th January 2003

This might be good news. The Mailinglist of Dispair is getting a reaction.
For those playing along at home, the Mailinglist of Dispair was--for a while--a sort of warning. When trolls bothered us with preaching and other such misspelled bullshit in the debate room, I'd ignore them and record their usernames [which, in yahoo.com terms, equate to EMail addresses] into the killfile. That was known as the Mailinglist of Dispair, to which I'd theoretically send a sort of counterattack of equal force at some future point.
Granted: it couldn't have been truly equal, since I actually know English; but the sentiment was about the same.
In application, the Mailinglist of Dispair has become combined with the gremlin.net mailinglist now. Which is to say that the same method by which the regulars to this site can be informed of updates [which, in reality, pretty well means that I've written another one of these What's News] is the method by which any one of several anonymous trollbusters subscribe TrollX@yahoo.com to the gremlin.net mailinglist, and, by extension, the Mailinglist of Dispair.
Which means that I actually have no idea who or what are subscribed to this mailinglist. That's all backend shit handled by a third party [appropriately enough, the third party happens to be AtheistBannerExchange.com]; all I do is send out whatever I send out through a form on their site; whom it gets sent to relies totally on the contents of the mailinglist.
Now: the brillance of this mailinglist is that it equates to applied darwinism. Those too dumb to work out that adding their EMail addresses to the list, but first clicking the Unsubscribe option, are doomed to receive these updates for the rest of their lives.
In other words, it's not my responsibility to save these people from their own idiocy.
I bring this up because one such moron EMailed me back. By chance, I happen to remember this twit: a certified fucking troll in the debate room. He's taken it upon himself to bother me with his sophistry outside the debate now. With this:

From: Jay Brewer [phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com] To: gremlin@gremlin.net Re: gremlin.net update Greetings, Hi there. Appreciate the spammed secular view, but perhaps there is something that you are being hasty about. Could be worse; I could refer to an EMail from an established opt-in list as spam. Are all conceptualizations of God somehow impossible? That depends. Define for 'god'. How do we know that a God does not exist? We don't. It's entirely possible that 'god' is a synonym for 'Twinkies'; those evidently exist. If and when one of you idiots gets round to publishing a defensible hypothesis regarding this variable thingy, we'll discuss the possibility of its existence. Our beliefs about what does and does not exist is primarily formed by the existence of sensory perception. Wrong. Your beliefs is...are [damnit I wish you people were smart] formed by a soft schizophrenia. Specifically: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. An inability to differentiate the logical from the emotional, in a nutshell. The sun comes up and provides heat; instead of trying to work out why that happens, you call it Ra and try to pray to it. Is there a nomologically imperceptible substance existing within the actual world out of which a God might conceptually (and thereby possibly) be composed? The sad thing about this sentence is that I actually know all the words involved, and it still fails to makes sense. That's usually a sign--a nomological sign, ironically enough--that the twit who's produced the sentence in the first place has no idea what he's talking about. So let's start by reducing this pretentious bullshit into the vernacular, so our Home Audience can see what a plebeian this loser is, as well.... Is there an existing substance which science hasn't described, out of which a deity might conceptually [and thereby possibly] be composed That much translated to the vernacular, we'll look at a few other problems with this sentence. Conceptual and possible are two different words. That they're spelled differently should have been a hint. There are really no rules of conduct for concepts. You can conceptualise about whatever you like. A concept is not 'therefore possible' in reality. It's possible to conceive a notion, not a substance. That much corrected, I'll answer your brainless begged question now. No. There is no known substance which is not known by members of the scientific community. We're the ones who get to keep secrets, because we're the ones who understand the fucking things. You moron; us informed. Dig? It turns out that such a substance exists: consciousness. Consciousness is a substance? What's its atomic weight? Idiot. Is consciousness somehow "formed" by brain processes? No; we actually have it delived once a month by the Schwan's Guy. Who authorised you to talk to me.... Can we know that even given psychophysical covariance and analytical functionalism establishing that covariance that consciousness is somehow exhausted to the physical? This shit again. Are you hoping I won't understand the question? Fine. Yes: we can know that. Because: the removal of the physical nullifies the consciousness. Thought is measured by its electrical frequency. Dead people don't produce electricity, so dead people don't produce thought. We've watched for the same electricity leaving a corpse as it dies, and it never happens. We can confirm it to the degree that it would be perverse to withhold. Which means Yes. We can, in fact, as a matter of fact, factually state that, even given your frantic need to misuse words you can't define, consciousness is somehow exhausted to the physical. Atheism I hold is ultimately only "just" a possibility in the same way that theism is only "just" a possibility. Good. First of all: don't hold atheism; you don't know where it's been. Second: atheism is the state of being without beliefs regarding deities, making it not only possible but natural. Outside of homosapiens, no animal on Earth appears to believe in deities; inside of homosapiens...I'm not here to talk about gerbils. Third: theism is possible. It's even confirmed to exist. Or, really, to occur. And, again, the, ah, nomological term is Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. I'd concede that both atheism and theism are possible states, but I never claimed that they weren't. An atheist that claims or makes the strongly necessary claim that "God does not exist" is making the same epistemological and conceptual mistake as a fundamentalist Christian who steadfastly claims that there is a hell in some metaphysical afterlife. Okay...while you're as wrong about this as anything you've ever whimpered about, I would agree that 'god does not exist' is a wasted sentence. It's right up there with 'unicorns do not exist', 'goblins do not exist', and 'widgets do not exist'. In fact, deities are closer to widgets than they are to unicorns and goblins; at least those have been somewhat defined. The point is simple. But so are you. So I'll make it even simpler. Whatever deities are supposed to be, they've never been shown to exist. Everything which has been shown to exist, from the important to the infinitesimal, has been shown to exist through the scientific method. But deities haven't. It's possible--in a conceptual sense--that deities might exist if only you'd stop demanding that they exist long enough to tell us what in hell they are. For all I know, these deities you keep asserting to exist are already known by some other name. Like maybe cacti. Or Triscuits. Is that simple enough for you? I'm not even going to entertain the possibility that the Lord thy Variable exists until you tell me what it is we're looking for. Give me a simple, static hypothesis, and we'll test it by the scientific method. Those are the rules. Sorry if you don't like them. But: if you don't like them, then stop using the things we've produced with the knowledge gained by the scientific method. Like your computer. Sincerely, Jay Brewer phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com

So there's that. Which could almost be the Spam of the Day. Except that I've got another one here someplace....

Spam of the Day

hello{{763A64F9-33DE-41DF-8876-CD4C98D9E534}}there{{103323088}} Oops. This must have been the same as the BGCOLOR for a reason.... Hi Gremlin. It's Tom. Hi Tom. It's Gremlin. You're in for a treat, Gremlin. A treat? Oh, right: my five hundred bucks. Tom. I've collected thousands of sources that need to give away money in the form of Grants for one of two reasons: Are either of them deities? * They're forced to by congress. So? You're forced to refrain from spamming me by Congress. And that didn't work. * If they don't give millions away, they'll pay BILLIONS in taxes. Are CapsLocked billions bigger than regular billions? And, either way: I have yet to see anything, congressional or otherwise, which allows you to pay a tenth of one percent of your taxes in grants. Either you seriously suck at math, or you're lying. Or both. Kind of puts you in the "driver's seat" for a change, huh, Gremlin? Yup. Get off the sidewalk. Tom. Just demonstrate a need, and I'll help you find a grant--guaranteed! Cool. Get back to me with that. These grants are time sensitive. So please, Gremlin, hurry over to: Hurry over? What's the point, Tom, of free money if there's effort involved in getting it? I thought that was the idea behind salaries. http://t.todayican.com/t/?t=699 I always like to see a TLD.domain.com/sub/?asp=variable for a legitimate business opportunity.... And I'll do my best to help. We'll talk about that once you've paid me the five hundred bucks you owe me for this. Tom Bell TodayICan.com Heh. I should go grab TomorrowISuck.com.... *********************************** Bad news, Tom: my screen is wider than thirty-five asterisks. The preceding message was sent to you as an opt-in subscriber to ChoiceOffers. We will continue to bring you valuable offers on the products and services that interest you most. If you wish to unsubscribe please click here: http://www.choiceoffers.net/remove.asp?E=GREMLIN@UNEXPLAINABLES.COM This is critical. And it requires a slight backstory. I have no immediate use for unexplainables.com [it's reserved for a project which has been postponed to hell and back], so I used gremlin@unexplainables.com for something a couple of years ago when I suspected that the people requiring it were probably EMail sellers. It turns out I was right. Which qualifies this as spam, since I never authorised dick in relation to this EMail address. <ASDFWERFSDHLWJHLJKGA;DFJOGHLASDJFDJFASKLJG;ASDLJVGA*TO;ASDFASDFASDF*TO; ,sdajf;aslkddufohdsfkaj;fqliyruoabvhfjlascvj;poieruvn gpja?fkm a;jv;klbvjd;ohiw?;wgojk?bam ;vnlak jkf;lakjdf asd asdlfkja;sdklfj flkasj adf;gjk763A64F9-33DE-41DF-8876-CD4C98D9E534*to; akdl;jf;lakgjav;mkfna;lkgjfg dlfja;fjkasdffjal;kdfj*to; klajfsjkahgf*to;ajklajgl;kzsvj763A64F9-33DE-41DF-8876-CD4C98D9E534ajkl; gal;p*to;f;lkagdfo;g bg[ag*to;fgakl;gjpaio*to;akl;jdf m;arj *to;gjajkl;ghneroui*to; gfasdj;oi adnhghrijmv[aqrg*to; sdf*to;763A64F9-33DE-41DF-8876-CD4C98D9E534 *to;a dfasdfa fasdf*to;asdfa763A64F9-33DE-41DF-8876-CD4C98D9E534sdf*to;as adfads fadf*to;cvasdf *to;asdfas fasfasdf*to;fasegfava> Ick. I can't imagine what purpose all this serves. I only know that it used to be the same as the BGCOLOR. People jam the weirdest things into the background that way....

More Later....
--Gremlin